Quake - Fall makes me nostalgic for FPSes, so! Gone through Episodes 1-3 so far. Very much enjoyed episodes 1 and 3, although... episode 2 I'm not sure how I feel about. Episode 1 and 3 were quite varied in terms of level mechanics and general mood, and were also very... surreal and abstract? Episode 2 was a lot of castle levels and they all seemed to be based around raising bridges. I'll need to revisit them on a replay. Maybe I just wasn't getting what Romero was going for.

Tenshi no Uta - PC Engine RPG, rather Dragon Quest/Phantasy Star-ish. My biggest/only? complaint is that the encounter rate is really high. This isn't actually a huge issue since the battles are incredibly fast. It's mostly just annoying because it keeps interrupting the rather excellent overworld/dungeon music. The game itself has this odd, very zoomed out look to it, but the spritework and areas have a lot of detail in them in spite of this. Lots of weird little events in town and there's a day/night cycle. For instance, in one fishing village, I came in at night, saw some side event that involved watching crabs dancing, and got 1000 experience for it.

Doom 2 - I have no idea what to make of Sandy Petersen's levels. A common complaint is that they're odd looking, which I definitely agree with. They also don't really make a good use of space -- the city levels have a lot of dead air. Aaat the same time I'm also having a very fun time playing them, and they feel like sort of proto-Serious Sam levels at time.

PSX Legend of the River King Game thing - I've been quite addicted to this for the past uh... week or two. Seems sort of like a remix of Nushi Tsuri 2, which was an SNES Legend of the River King game (the ones the US got on the GB/GBC were Nushi Tsuri 3 and 4). The SNES version looks quite a bit nicer/has more detail in the towns and NPC sprites/unique building interiors and more fitting music, exceeeept the way battles work is kind of drag in that one. The encounter rate is really high, the escape rate is low, and the battle system's the same one from LottRK, where you just wait for some punch icon to randomly bounce around the screen until it lands on the enemy.

PSX one on the other hand lets you run 100% of the time with the risk of taking some damage or having something stolen, also lets you just greet the enemies to get them to go away sometime, and the encounter rate's really low. Also all of the player characters seem to have some unique events which is nice. So yeah gross art direction aside this is super fun.

Anyway this also got me looking at getting an N64 now, since it's got Shigesato Itoi's Bass Fishing and another Legend of the River King thing. What is my life.

Quake 3 - Just doing the single player tiers, and finding it surprisingly fun on the harder difficulties -- the bots, while not as good as UTs, have a lot of personality. (Meanwhile going to UT from Q3 and trying to play UT like Q3 does... not end well).

Yuuymai Dooru - A sidescrolling adventure game with light life sim elements about a group of friends exploring their recession-damaged town to uncover the supernatural... things lurking underneath, while dealing with their own mental/emotional problems. Also probably too obscure to have had any influence on NitW, so.

Basically you pick one of the friends to play as during the school day so you can listen to your classmates and find out about ghost-related rumors. At night, you walk one of the character's dog while investigating said rumors. You encounter ghosts but it's not entirely clear so far if they're real or if one of the characters has some kind of schizophrenia? that her father's refusing to treat out of some broken sense pride.

Unreal - Did the first four levels. THAT was a major nostalgia trip. I don't know if any FPS has really given me that same feeling of being in a *world*.

Shenmue - Up to disc 2. Did the stealth bit at the port. I'm ahead of where I need to be so I think I'll just mess around for a few days before advancing the story. The way the late afternoon sky at the port looks gives me... memories.

Quake 2 - There's a secret Hard+/Nightmare difficulty. I have no idea why it's hidden by default, since the AI only seems to behave right in this mode and the general pacing of item pickups in levels feels balanced towards it? Anyway, nearing the end of the second unit. While I'd agree that Quake 1's single player is better, I don't think the quality gap between them's all that great. (Well, I'm not a fan of Q2's soundtrack at all, at least -- Q1ish ambient music would've been a lot better I think).

GOD Pure - Speaking of PSX remakes of SNES games with kind of gross art direction that ultimately play better than their source material... Got the third party member, who was a teenaged girl that had been brainjacked by aliens into starring a cult on Ryuukyuu. The aliens were turning the cultistis into monsters or something.

Magic the Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers (The old one) - I haven't done anything productive in this really, just wandered around, dueling guys, and collecting cards. There seems to be some kind of deck scaling going on because the green-deck guys seem to have a thing for Llanowar Elves spam right now and I'm not really familiar enough with MTG to cope with that :)

Shining Force 3 - By some weird quirk of luck/level stat gain, Frank is one-shotting regular mooks, whereas Hayward and that super-generic soldier guy, both of whom should be better, aren't really that good for me. Probably should've given Hayward that level up fruit before class changing him. Ah well.

Rimo-cocoron - Unrelated to Cocoron. Stylistically it's similar to Katamari Damacy visually. Basically you get various scenes where you need to take a "snapshot" of an item in the scene and "use" it on someone in the scene to get them to interact with it, based on their wants. Once you've satisfied enough people's wants/caused enough mayhem, you can unlock the next scene, but there's a time limit so you can't mess around forever. It's vaguely similar to those flash grow games that were popular in the aughts but with infinitely higher production values. Has an impressive amount of events to trigger -- the collectapedia for Stage 2, which I played a bunch, only has like 62% of the events founds?

Children of the Nile - Someone on GOG found a thing to fix the framerate issues with this. I think this is maybe my favorite city builder now? Really unique mechanics -- I'd recommend checking out Tilted Mill's webpage for their design discussions.

« Last Edit: October 19, 2017, 11:13:34 PM by MeshGearFox »

Logged

o/` I do not feel joy o/`o/` I do not dream o/`o/` I only stare at the door and smoke o/`

Noel in Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, so I'm exploring other available areas to power up by completing quests.

RE: LR. I think you are supposed to stop before said boss, do a bunch of fetch quests and come back and beat him, then run out of time and do the whole game over again. I dropped soon after that boss and just watched the story on the youtubes. The game would have been OK enough for 1 playthrough but 2 lol no.

That LR boss shouldn't be that hard. Annoying yes, but not enough to force yourself to unlock Ability Mods. All you really need is a good understanding of the gameplay (as LR has context sensitive actions that can further boost attack damage or further reduce incoming damage, plus they changed the way that Stagger works as its triggers and effects vary from fight to fight), and to set up a good schema (you'll want a solid attacker outfit, a dedicated defensive outfit and something that either works with AoE magic or debuffs).

Yep all 3 games on Steam have a button you can set to fast foward in the configuration, R2 by default. You can even set how fast it moves out of battle and in battle.

When I set up my gamepad controls, there was no "fast forward" option for me to assign a button to, anywhere. T___TMy R2 rotates the camera to the right.

Seriously, though, how am I supposed to adequately equip ALL 16 CHARACTERS for this last dungeon!? Is there some trick to getting tons of mira and sepith?? I've got a few up to snuff, but I have so many more to go...

Also, last thing: Alan Richard is frickin' awesome. Just want to stress that.

pre-ordered .hack. Currently debating what game to start next: FF12, restart FF15, .hack, Trails 2, or metroid 2 DS. It will probably be .hack which I was thinking of saving until college football season ended however I'll have XBC 2, Ni No Kuni and maybe a Cold Steel game for that.

I want to say "PLAY ZODIAC AGE", but since you're hoping to play a Cold Steel title after fall, might I suggest Trails SC for your main Autumn RPG?

Logged

"You know, you're pretty cool too, Arvis. You like good music, good games, and good tennis." - Divingfalcons

When I set up my gamepad controls, there was no "fast forward" option for me to assign a button to, anywhere. T___TMy R2 rotates the camera to the right.

Load the configuration tool before starting the game and go to input the third tab in it. THere is an option for Turbo Mode it's defulat is ALT or Button 12(normally the Right Trigger), underneath the buttons you can see Field Turbo Rate and Battle Turbo Rate. This was added in a patch to make sure you have the game updated.

Been playing Gundam Versus. I'm enjoying myself, but I'm honestly not that good. XP

Same. Melee in particular keeps tripping me up, and there are a few characters (Ground Gundam especially) where the dash moves seem unnecessarily tricky. It doesn't help that the tutorial is literally useless. Just drops you into the game, and you can't progress until you win., Teaching new players? What's that?!

Honestly, if I hadn't watched 2+ hours of it streamed before playing, I'm not sure I'd have even the slightest idea what I'm doing. And that was purely a coincidence that I stumbled upon that. Also, why are there no Suits from 0080, even as DLC? Or SEED Destiny? Not that I'd be too enthusiastic to play them, but you'd think they'd at least include the Destiny Gundam and any of the Red units (none of Athrun's suits even make an appearance!). I'd have to check Extreme VS againb, but I have a feeling that I should've waited on this one, at least as far as seeing my personal faves in action.

Oh yeah, and no mid-combat Subtitles? I know some people find that distracting, but I'd really love to know what they're saying without having to learn an entire language....

Logged

“MY NAME IS POKEY THE PENGUIN I LOVE CHESS!! IT IS LIKE BALLET ONLY WITH MORE EXPLOSIONS!”I Draw Stuff Sometimes

Same. Melee in particular keeps tripping me up, and there are a few characters (Ground Gundam especially) where the dash moves seem unnecessarily tricky. It doesn't help that the tutorial is literally useless. Just drops you into the game, and you can't progress until you win., Teaching new players? What's that?!

Honestly, if I hadn't watched 2+ hours of it streamed before playing, I'm not sure I'd have even the slightest idea what I'm doing. And that was purely a coincidence that I stumbled upon that. Also, why are there no Suits from 0080, even as DLC? Or SEED Destiny? Not that I'd be too enthusiastic to play them, but you'd think they'd at least include the Destiny Gundam and any of the Red units (none of Athrun's suits even make an appearance!). I'd have to check Extreme VS againb, but I have a feeling that I should've waited on this one, at least as far as seeing my personal faves in action.

Oh yeah, and no mid-combat Subtitles? I know some people find that distracting, but I'd really love to know what they're saying without having to learn an entire language....

I freaking love Ground Gundam. It is one of my better ones for...some reason. The suits I consider myself decent with are Ground Gundam, the Ez-8, and the Delta-Plus. I think I'm alright with the Zeta as well. I also have had way too much success with the Guncannon considering it is the Guncannon. I've mostly been playing casual matches with my suit set to random. I've played as everything at this point. Still have no idea how to play as a few of them like the Qubeley.

And yeah they have got some weird omissions like the Athrun suits. One that annoys me the most is 00 Raiser. I have to admit, I don't mind the lack of 0080 as the Alex does not instill me with excitement.

Guncannon is OP. Because it has the deadliest weapon in the entire game: Giant rocks! The natural enemy of Mecha! =P

Seriously, it's a little too agile considering it's only supposed to be mid-rangte support, but then again, so is the Ground Gundam to an extent. It's also funny how the Guncannon II doesn't seem as useful simply because it moves the way you'd expect it to...and doesn't throw boulders at people (seriously, why?)

I just can't figure out how to consistantly boost forward without melee canceling. I had the same problem in Extreme VS, actually. Trying to catch up to an opponent is a chore. The Ground Gundam is also supposed to do a running dash, but I only ever seem to do it on accident...this is why I would've appreciated an actual explanation of gameplay mechanics instead of the lazy intro we got.

« Last Edit: October 20, 2017, 08:32:30 PM by Mickeymac92 »

Logged

“MY NAME IS POKEY THE PENGUIN I LOVE CHESS!! IT IS LIKE BALLET ONLY WITH MORE EXPLOSIONS!”I Draw Stuff Sometimes

pre-ordered .hack. Currently debating what game to start next: FF12, restart FF15, .hack, Trails 2, or metroid 2 DS. It will probably be .hack which I was thinking of saving until college football season ended however I'll have XBC 2, Ni No Kuni and maybe a Cold Steel game for that.

I want to say "PLAY ZODIAC AGE", but since you're hoping to play a Cold Steel title after fall, might I suggest Trails SC for your main Autumn RPG?

I'm going to start .hack which is something I can play for an couple hours after work at a time. I always have to marathon Trails games. Zodiac age will probably be a summer game.

I finished that run of FE6 I started a bit back where I only use bad characters. Couldn't reach the good ending because I let Zelot die without recruiting him, but it's not like the final chapters aren't just a dragon steamroll using your legendary weapons.

After that I played through the campaign of Starcraft 2. It was my first time playing Legacy of the Void. Aside from some really stupid scenes in Heart of the Swarm I thought the story as a whole was fine, but I didn't get very invested in the story like I remember with the first Starcraft. Maybe it's just that I'm older, but I think the issue was that Starcraft 2 has an overarching plot boiling down to "ancient evil awakens". It was always there, and is an element found in a ton of fantasy/scifi stories, but it's usually what I find the least interesting. Great game though, might screw around with some custom maps later- it's what made me pour hundreds of hours into the first game.

I just started playing Fire Emblem 5. Decided to just play the game in Japanese since I heard the only translation hanging around is really bad (not just the kind that's inaccurate or uses awkward English, but the kind that inserts random internet memes and jokes where they don't belong). Up to Chapter 4x and I'm having way too much fun with the capture and stealing mechanics of the game. One of the things I feel is really missing from the more recent games in the series is inventory and resource management (although that's present somewhat in Conquest), and one way that showed up is how in the GBA games thieves were pure utility and were worth deploying simply for the things they could steal. Being able to capture enemies or steal whatever the unit is capable of carrying is basically that turned to 11. Although in order to satisfy my capturing obsession I might be overusing Dagdar and Eyvel a lot. Decided to feed my status boosters to Dagdar since I'll probably use him long term with all this going on, and I might try to keep whatever scrolls I get on him so he gets an actual level up sometime. Hopefully this won't bite me in the ass because I've heard there's actually cases where players find themselves unable to win the game because of some decision they made early on.

That aside I'm enjoying the creativity in some of the maps so far. Chapter 3 had a pretty unique side objective and Chapter 4 is unique as a whole. The latter did have a bullshit surprise for me near the end but I got through it on my second attempt. Never thought I'd be thanking all the major deities for Leif's Light Brand because I found it largely useless in FE4.